Visiting Chernobyl

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

The vehicle graveyard

About 15 km from Chernobyl, thousands of vehicles are left to rust. At first, the graveyard was meant to store only vehicles contaminated by isotopes with a short half-life, like Iodine. After a few months they would have been safe. Unfortunately, other vehicles were parked there, and the wind blew more dangerous particles over here, rendering all these trucks and helicopters useless for the first few centuries.Unfortunately we were not allowed to walk between the vehicles.

^^ fire engines.

^^ school busses used for the evacuation of the zone. You can clearly see what is left of the rotors of two helicopters in the back.

^^ An army truck. Note that the engine is missing, probably stolen by looters or corrupt civil servants for sale on the black market.

^^ Armored Personnel Carriers used by the fire department.

^^ These gunship helicopters flew straight from the Afghan battlefield to Chernobyl to aid in the building of the sarcophagus.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Pripyat I

The abandoned town "Pripyat" was a so-called "sleeper town", built to house those who worked in the power plant and the port. It was built from scratch in the seventies after the plant was completed and was very modern by contemporary soviet standards.

^^ When entering Pripyat from the south, travellers are greeted with a part of the refrain of the Hymn of the Soviet Union. "Partiya Lenina, sila narodnaya / Nas k torzhestvu kommunizma vedyot!" (Party of Lenin, will of the people / Lead us to the victory of communism).

^^ Further down the road is the "cultural palace". The gray cloud in the background is smoke from a forrest fire. Pictures from inside will follow.

^^ Those little stars were a nice touch.

^^ We climbed that high rise building. The view was spectacular.

^^ Another view of that appartment building. About five hundred people lived here.

^^ Ugh, insitutional green. This is inside the appartment building. Unfortunately, there was no time to explore it.

^^ The kindergarten as seen from above. Pictures from inside will follow

^^ The view of the town square as seen from the top floor: bottom: The restaurant, left: the cinema / cultural palace, top: the hotel.

^^ More housing blocks (click for big)

^^ Reactor 4 still dominates the landscape in Pripyat.

^^ A giant hammer and sickle, Serge and reactor 4.

^^ A forrest fire

In the next update, I will show how some of the buildings look from the inside.